The town of Edfu is located on the west back of the Nile River, some sixty miles south of Luxor, with Aswan further south. Its ancient name was Wetjeset-Hrw, or “The Place Where Horus is Extolled.” The modern Arabic name of Edfu is derived from the ancient Egyptian name Djeba, or Etbo in Coptic. Djeba meant “Retribution Town”, since the enemies of the god were brought to justice therein. The site of ancient Djeba was the traditional location of the mythological battle between the gods of Horus and Set, and its sandstone Ptolemaic temple, dedicated to Horus, is the most complete and best preserved of all the temples of Egypt. It was built on the site of a New Kingdom temple, which was oriented east to west, the Ptolemaic structure follows instead a north-south axis. In Graeco-Roman times Edfu was called Apollinopolis Magna, the Egyptian god Horus by then being identified with the Greek god Apollo. Edfu was the capital of the second nome of Upper Egypt, an important regional center from the Old Kingdom, partly due to the large area of fertile land belonging to the town, partly to the fact that Edfu was situated near the frontier between Egypt and Nubia, though not as close as was Philae. Edfu was probably a starting point for desert routes leading to the Kharga Oasis in the west, and to the mines of the Eastern Desert and the Red Sea coast in the east. Although there is no incontrovertible evidence of Early Dynastic occupation at Edfu, a number of oval graves, completely plundered, have been found. Edfu had an attractive geographic location, elevated within the floodplain in Upper Egypt, so logically it would have attracted settlers at that time. Confirming this, pottery dated from the Old Kingdom has been found within the town enclosure, perhaps as early as the Third Dynasty. There is a tradition that Imhotep, the vizier and architect who designed the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, designed the first stone temple at Edfu. Little is known of this temple today, and none of its remains have been found, but it was dedicated to Horus, Hathor of Dendera, and their son, Herumatawy, or Harsomtus in Greek. No larger remains dating earlier than the 5th Dynasty have been found at Edfu. Its most ancient cemetery comprised the mastabas of the Old Kingdom as well as later tombs, and covers the area southwest of the precinct of the great temple of Horus. Before the beginning of the New Kingdom, the necropolis was transferred to Hager Edfu, to the west, and then in the Late period to the south at Nag’ el-Hassaya. The entire area was called Behedet. The god Horus was herein worshipped as Horus Behedet. One of these mastabas belonged to a man named Isi, who was the “great chief of the Nome of Edfu” in the 6th Dynasty. Isi lived during the reign of King Djedkare Isesi of the Fifth and into the reign of Pepi I of the Sixth Dynasties. He was an administrator, judge, chief of the royal archives and a “Great One among the Tens of the South. Isi later became a living god and was so worshipped during the Middle Kingdom. As the Sixth Dynasty and the Old Kingdom drew to a close, local regional governors and administrative nobles took on a larger power in their areas, away from the royal central authority.